NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with David Scott, astronaut and commander of Apollo 15, part 1 of 3

Actually, when Kennedy made his speech, I was in graduate school and the space program was pretty far away. My objectives were to get a master's degree and go to test pilot school, so it really didn't have a big impact. You weren't thinking about the moon, boy, that sounds interesting to do that. No, no. My focus was on going to test pilot school and flying airplanes. When did you get interested in being an astronaut? Well, I think when the opportunity came to apply to NASA for the third group of astronauts, I was at the aerospace research pilot school at the time, which is sort of a graduate test pilot school. And the thing to do was to apply for all the programs that were going on, and there were many, many programs at that time, mandorberling, laboratory, dinosaur, X-15, it was just a great time to be around, so apply to NASA and see if you can get in. Now, when did you know you were going to be getting your first flight? What flight was that going to be? Involved in the Gemini program, what was going on then? Actually, I started working on the guidance and navigation part of Apollo as the representative

of the astronaut office during the early part of Germany. And I was Capcom on Gemini 5, and when they came down Cooper and Conrad, Deeks Layton got me at the back of the VIP room and said, say, I want you to switch jobs now. I'd like you to work with Neil on Gemini 8. That was it. Well, we went off. Now, talk to me about Gemini. Well, how important was Gemini, did we have gotten to the moon without Gemini? Did it accomplish a lot? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you had to have Gemini before you could do Apollo, because what Gemini really did was to define the operational procedures, the manner in which you conducted the mission, the rendezvous, the docking, and the long duration. It really verified the techniques and the concepts that we were going to use to go to the moon. What about medically? I mean, what did we really know then? From a lot of this audience, they don't understand. What do we know about people in space at that time? Did we know much?

What questions did we have? Well, actually, at that time, in relative terms, we knew little. I mean, Mercury had a fair amount of understanding medically, but until you really got to Gemini 7 and the 14-day flight with a Mormon level, we really didn't know how the body would sustain that long a period, and we had to know that in order to go to the moon. What were the fears? Do you know? Well, I think the fears were just, could you perform after, say, a week in space, up to the level that you expected to? I mean, by the time we flew on Gemini, they knew that your eyeballs weren't going to change, they knew you could drink, they knew you could sleep. So it was really, can you perform after that long a period in space? Answer was yes. So, take me to Gemini 8. You're up there. Things were going fine. Describe what was happening and when the trouble hit. When the should hit the fans, so to speak. Well, we were on a, I guess, a pretty good high, having completed the first docking, and trying to un-stote things and stote things and get ready for dinner and on a nice side.

Pretty relaxed. Out of contact with the ground, because as you probably know, during those days, we only had certain periods when we could talk to a ground station for four or five minutes. And all of a sudden, I looked over at Neil's panel and saw we were in a bank, and I said, hey, Neil, we're in a bank. And he said, yeah, gee, what's going on? And from then on, it was rather exciting for about 25 minutes. When we had a thruster that failed on and off intermittently, we couldn't turn it off, and when Neil would try to use it, it wouldn't go on. It was a very confusing situation, which, interestingly enough, sort of started by us being on a wrong track in that mission control had told us, before we went out of range, that they thought there was a problem with the agenda that we docked with, and the agenda had a lot of problems. So they sort of set us up to expect a problem with the agenda, and when we started this role, which soon turned into a tumble, we thought it was the agenda.

So we switched the agenda off, and then the Germany off, and it became a very confusing situation because nothing seemed to follow a pattern. But fortunately, Neil Armstrong being the pilot it is, he worked through the procedures and got everything settled down. We undocked. He stopped the role on the reentry control system, and the mission rule says, once you activate that, you have to come down. So it turned out to be a pretty normal reentry. Actually, we got pretty close to the plan target. And I always like to say that the records, in some cases, are how close you are to the prime carrier. Neil and I still hold the record for being the furthest from the prime carrier, about 6,000 miles. Describe that sensation. What was going on in that thing at its worst? Well, you know, when you're in a situation like that, you focus on the problem. And we were trying to figure out what the problem was. So looking at the instruments, because we're in the night side, and going through the procedures on the switches, you're pretty much focused in the cockpit on the panel, and you really

don't think about the physiological sensation, other than at the higher rates towards the end of the problem, why we started getting tunnel vision, because the spin and our bodies were going around the center of rotation or the spacecraft. But basically, it seemed to happen pretty fast, I mean, even though it was going on for about 25 minutes from the time it started to stop, the high intensity periods were short, and you know, we're just focused on the problem. Solve the problem. Do you ever think you're going to black out? I mean, for most people, that's kind of like a wild merry-go-round ride. We really don't think about that. You know, you're thinking about the procedures, is it the Agina? Is it the Gemini? What part of the Gemini? You know, how do you solve the problem? And you really don't consciously think, oh, I might black out, because you don't think you are. Good. Let's move on to, what's your cup for a second? As you were getting into Gemini, or getting through Gemini, I should say, did long about then the scientists started to show up, the talk of the geologists, and all that thing

started to happen. And you guys are really focused on flying and engineering and aerodynamics. Well, a very early part of the training, probably around 64 or so, we started having geology courses. I remember in a building at Ellington Field, which was sort of rundown and hot in the afternoon in Texas, and we had these people come in and lecture about geology, because of course we were going to eventually go to the moon. And I really didn't pay much attention to it. Flying was first on the agenda, and at the time I was doing a lot of flying with my good friend, Charlie Bassett, and we'd sit in the back of the room and look at our watches to see when we could get back into an airplane. So we really didn't pay a lot of attention, but we watched it, and we were supposed to do and learn the terms and everything. It didn't really come together, it didn't feel like a solid language, but it was part of the course, so we jumped into that part of the course. And there wasn't really any thought about a geologist coming, you know, when they picked up the scientist in 67, whenever it was, people said, well, Jack Smith's here, he's a geologist,

he'll probably go to the moon. But I don't think I didn't pay any attention to that, really. I said, okay, fine, but I'm working for my ride. My focus is to learn how to fly this thing and get on down the road to see if I can get a lunar mission. Did you think that you needed scientists to go to the moon in those days? You personally. Or do you think astronauts could do whatever needed to be done? Well, I think at that time, most of us thought we could handle what needed to be done, which was really being a field observer, you know, and I don't think we really were concerned about getting too deep into the theory of geology, if you will, but rather locating the rocks, taking the photos and being field observers. So it didn't really seem to me that we needed scientists or geologists, and I think at the end of the day, we didn't. Let's talk about Apollo 9, and what, it's called a test pilot's feast. It doesn't have much notoriety.

If you talk to the average citizen if Apollo 9, what was that, you know, what was so special about Apollo 9 then? Well, it was probably the premier test flight of any space mission that flew. Because we had so many new things to do, I was very fortunate to be with a great crew with Jim McDevitt and Rusty Schweikert, and we spent a long time on that mission about two and a half years getting ready for it in one form or another, but it was the first Apollo rendezvous, first use of a lunar module, first docking of Apollo, first many, many things. And everybody had something they did individually. I got to fly the command module solo. I got to do a solo EVA, all pretty exciting. Rusty did the EVA, it gemded to rendezvous. There were just many things that had to be verified on Apollo, most of which had been done on Germany, but they had to be verified with the Apollo hardware and the Apollo equipment and Apollo procedures. So it was sort of opening the door to go to the moon, and we had the first shot at that. Did you feel at that time, well, if I'm doing Apollo 9, my chance to get in that first

lunar landing is just about nil, was that a concern of yours? No, I don't think there was any concern about who was going to be first, because we didn't think first was going to be quite as soon as it actually happened. As you probably know, the crews were selected in a sort of rotation, but nobody was assigned to the lunar mission until the rotation showed that we would get to the moon. In fact, on Apollo 9, had we not been successful, the next mission would have been Apollo 9 again, or the D mission. So when we started Apollo 9, we figured that if we got about half of it done, it would be successful. But then the next flight behind us, the next crew behind us would have to finish it up, and who knows who would get to go to the moon. And it could just very fortuitous, or maybe because the system was so great that the crews went in succession, and every mission starting with Apollo 7 was almost 100 percent successful. Amazing. Now, was that the first time the LEM was used in the configuration buzz Aldrin talked about turning around, going backwards on Apollo 9?

Was that what you were doing flying in that configuration for the first time? Upside down. Well, I know. The story is, who's upside down? Well, the way you set up the relative position of the two spacecraft is such that when the LEM gets ready to leave the command module, the eyes of the people in the LEM are 180 degrees upside down from the eyes of the guy in a command module. And in space, when there's really no ground, and...